Friday, 22 August 2008

So, before I go off to bed...

Current mood: tired

I've promised Mum I'll get to bed earlier tonight, and I am exhausted, both emotionally and physically right now (something about David making Mum cry, and a lump of cheese, if you must have a hint now!) so I can't stay here long, but I promised I'd work towards catching up with this blog, so here we go! The rest will have to be written tomorrow, when I finally get a day of rest here in Grottsville.

So back to Friday August 15th.

Nobody had discussed an itinerary for our short stay in Norfolk, so I had absolutely no idea what we were doing at all! But on Friday morning I was told that we were going to a nearby car boot sale. Usually car boot sales that take place outside of the weekend are total rubbish, and after David had spent hours showering, and we had been to breakfast, we were pretty late too, so I didn't hold out much hope. In fact, I stopped to look in three charity shops that were right by the hotel on the way to the car park before we even set off!

When we arrived (after David had driven straight past the place and had to turn the car around, making us even later), we discovered the sale was tiny anyway. I was so convinced I wouldn't find anything that I even stopped to put my boots on, something I would never normally do even at the muddiest car boot sale!

However, the sale was not as bad as I had thought.

The stalls that were there weren't run by the usual dealers with market-type overpriced goods; they were mainly genuine families trying to clear out their houses etc. And there were tons of ponies! I saw Meadowbrook in a pile of toys, a bag of G2s, a whole rug covered in G3s complete with playsets and boxes on another, and finally a HUGE box of poor condition common G1s and fakies but managed to resist the urge to "save them". I have far too many ponies as it is. See, I really am trying to stop buying so many!

Dejected, I started to walk back to the car. There are so few ponies I actually need for my collection now, booting is getting pretty pointless. Oh well, at least Mum had got a couple of mice ornaments for her collection.

On the way back to the car park, we passed a toy dealer (whom we had already walked by twice!), with crates of toys he hadn't bothered to unpack. I had checked his table already though, and seen there were no ponies. Just crates and crates of Barbie dolls. Out of the corner of my eye, I thought I saw something familiar right at the bottom of one of the crates. It looked like one of the hoops from Dream Castle! Surely, I was imagining things. But no... That really DID look familiar. And then I saw something else - Blossom's flower symbol, pressed against the side of the crate! There were ponies underneath the Barbie dolls. I started to dig down the box, although David kept getting in my way, and piling the dolls back on top of my hands (?!), "helping" me. There were eight ponies there, bagged up with some original accessories.

I already had the ponies, although these were in gorgeous condition (Where are all these beautiful minty condition ponies coming from?), and far better than the ones I have in my collection, but the accessories were what really interested me! Baby North Star's bib, nappy and feeding dish, Non-So-Soft North Star's brush, and...*Drumroll please*...Toddles and Tuggles' see-saw! All right, so that may not sound particularly exciting to you, but I have always wanted to complete my Newborn Twins sets, and this was the last see-saw I needed, having not seen one at a boot sale/charity shop etc. for over eight years!

I ended up buying all the real ponies (Yes, "can't seperate the plastic ponies from their friends" fever set in again!), one 80s fakie, and many accessories for a total of £11. Not exactly what I'd call cheap for a boot sale, but hey, I don't think that's a bad deal either. All of them can be seen in the picture below, taken at the hotel that night. (Never mind plushie Pinkie Pie, Shell Pony and Starcatcher - they just came with me to Norfolk for the ride! )

North Star really is in "new" condition. She still has that "off the card" plastic smell!

I managed to cram all of the ponies into my bag, and gave myself a bad shoulder carrying them around all day, not wanting to leave them in the car in case they got stolen...

Next to Hemsby, a small seaside town where Mum remembered I found loads of really old coin operated kiddie rides ten years ago, when I used to love riding the things so much, so I wanted to go back and photograph them for my new website. Of course, like so many of these things, the vast majority of them had been scrapped over the years. There were far fewer rides, and most were modern Italian ones. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying anything against Italy, but I really wanted to see my "old friends".

Only one remained - Sparkle Rainbow (Yes, I used to come up with very strange, boring names. But remember I was only about seven at the time!) I still have an old photograph of me riding her when we visited Hemsby before, I wish I had a scanner to show you why I love re-visiting the few rides that remain, and the happy memories they hold for me.

We continued on to Redwings Horse Sanctuary's Caldecott branch, where my adopted horse Sam used to live. I always wanted to go and visit him, but we couldn't go away when Splodge was still around, and Sam passed away three or four years ago. Since then, I have adopted Rusty, who still lives at Caldecott to this day, along with the horse we adopted for Grandad, Sydney. We hadn't been to the sanctuary up there since I was two or three, when we took Grandad to see his old adopted horse, Albert, who died a while before Sam.

Anyways, it was really nice to finally get to meet our two current adopted horses. Rusty is beautiful, although he's quite greedy and seemed more interested in eating the food one of the Redwings staff offered him than seeing any of us!

I think this photograph of him came out pretty nicely (possibly better than the official Redwings ones!), considering he wouldn't stop stomping about and demanding more food between guzzling grass!

David also took a photo of me in front of his paddock, kind of as proof that "I woz ere" if you get what I mean. Try to ignore me and the huge bag of shoulder aches...er, I mean ponies. I look kind of odd (Don't I always?!) but at least I'm smiling for once.

As for Sydney, he was really friendly as well as being the most handsome horse we'd ever seen. He came when called (without having to be tempted by food!) and even Mum stroked his nose without being too scared, which is a miracle when it comes to Mum and horses!

Hmm... Well, I didn't even get one day further with this catch up blog, but Mum just woke up, and I really don't think it's fair to keep her up any longer, so I will continue this tomorrow morning. I'll be getting up early for the Canadian voice overs and commercials (not in that order...of course! We all know I'm only getting up for the adverts really, don't we?! ), so I may as well update my Myspace blog at the same time.

To those of you I still haven't written to, I will get around to that in the morning too, I promise. Life's just been pretty busy this last week or so as I think my next blog should prove!

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About Me

Hi, my name's Desirée Skylark. I’m a 24-year-old daydreamer, stranded in the UK but hoping someday to move to Vancouver. I would love to be a professional actress, specialising in voice overs in animation and commercials, and in musical theatre... did I mention that I like daydreaming?
I am the proud owner of a large herd of My Little Ponies – some people might laugh, but they help me to de-stress and take me back to my happier childhood days! I’m also a coin operated ride enthusiast – I have over 1600 photos of them from when I was small! Almost ALL of these rides have now been scrapped so I’m trying to put together a website about them and the people who made them. It’s quite fascinating to discover their history!
The last few years of my life have been an utter nightmare (read my older blog entries for the full details), and I have been left with no education or chance to achieve my full potential as far as finding a job goes. I do hope now that we have finally moved house that I will be able to start getting my life back on track, but it’s going to be hard. Join me on my blogging journey – can I turn this into a real life Cinderella story with a happy ending?